A Conversation with Ricky Rouse...............by
Chuck Haber
There have always been a cadre of musicians flowing
in and out of the Parliament/Funkadelic thang. The Funk Mob is just
that. A Mob. Musicians, singers they come and go. Some stay for
months others for years. Go to a PFunk show these days at some point
your gonna hear somebody ask “Who’s that new guitar
player?”
Ricardo “Ricky” Rouse maybe new to you
on stage with P-Funk, but if you listened to any popular Soul; Rock
n Roll, RnB, Funk, House, Hip Hop or even Pop music in the past
30 years you’ve heard him before. You just didn’t know
it.
Ricky Rouse grew up in Detroit, a musical child
prodigy. When he was three he started to play guitar. He quickly
learned how to read music and play the piano. When eleven year old
Stevie Wonder signed with Motown, Ricky Rouse was his guitar player.
He was seven.
Ricky has played on over sixty platinum albums in
just about every genre of music except country. He has toured with
a virtual Who’s Who of artists. To list them all would take
up a least a whole page but artists like Stevie Wonder, Bobby Womack,
Bohannon, The Dramatics, Chaka Kahn, Irv Gotti, and Dre only scratch
the surface.
“When I was in Junior high Ricky already had
a ridiculous reputation,” Clip Payne told me. “ I went
to North and he lived across town. The Ricky Rouse Club was the
band he started in High School. He had girls with pom poms doing
the Ricky Rouse Chant like the Mousekateers. R-i-c K-e-y Rouse,
before he walked on stage. He would be rolling around the floor,
playing’ with his teeth. All the haters in my school couldn’t
stand him.”
When I told Ricky what Clip said he laughed.
“I had asthma as a kid so I couldn’t
play sports. I put that athletic stuff onto the stage.” he
told me. “I took things that Chuck Berry and then Jimi Hendrix
were doing an put my own twist on it.”
When Ricky was just fourteen three things happened
that changed him forever.
“In 1969 I saw Sly then around 6 months later
I saw George, just after he crossed over into the Wild Thing. It
blew me away. I was into George since the early Parliament stuff
but that Funkadelic show changed my whole thing.”
I asked Ricky in what way did Sly and George change
things for you. What did they do that made it so different?
“Funk had always been a part of the blues,
Ray Charles is funky, Otis Reeding, Screamin Jay Hawkins were funky.
Elements of the blues had funk in it but James Brown was the first
to do straight up funk. Then came Sly and George. They changed it
up. Sly took the Funk and made it psychedelic and pop. Then George
came and took it to another level. He went everywhere with it on
a massive scale. The vocals, the horns, the bass lines, the guitars
it was all funky.”
The third earth shaker was Jimi Hendrix. Like many
fourteen year old guitar players in 1969 and the millions since.
“Jimi just blew me away. I got lost in the Hendrix thing for
a while.
A lot of people heard Hendrix and went out and got
guitars and learned to play a Hendrix tune but Ricky was different.
He knows the entire catalogue. The playing part was easy. That came
natural. Letting him focus on the esthetic. Ricky loved where Jimi
was taking it both in sound and style.
“ I was into Eddie Hazel and Jimi Hendrix
but I really fell in love with Jimi. We shared the same influences,
Bobby Womack, Curtis Mayfield, Steve Cropper (Booker T & the
MG’s). I knew where he was comin’ from, so I was able
to take some of the things he was doin and incorporate them into
my style.”
In 1972 Ricky dropped out of high school to go on
the road with Undisputed Truth (they had the hit, “Smiling
Faces”). He has been touring and recording professionally
for a wide variety of artists ever since. He hooked up with Death
Row Records in the early 90's, quickly becoming the studio guy for
Dre, Snoop, and Tupac.
“ Dre was doing the MTV awards and was putting
together a band. His stuff is all based on P-Funk so he wanted to
put together a Funkadelic type band. I was in LA and a protogee
of mine told Dre about me. When he heard me play he hired me on
the spot. That’s how I started doing Gangster Funk with the
Death Row crew.”
That started us into a conversation about the differences
between Gangster Funk and Hip Hop and what P-Funk and Sly were doing.
“Gangster funk lines are a little different
from what George was doing...... its not as progressive... cause
the kids can’t hear a lot of music. They just hear a big beat
and one or two changes. It’s all about the beat, about the
groove... Hip Hop is a BASIC thing with a whole different sound.
It has a street thing. I couldn’t be too musical, with a whole
lot of changes like George and Sly.
Though it’s all based on P-Funk, what they
[Dre] consider gangster is a different type of line, cause it’s
a different generation of funk. What was funky in 75 is different
than in 95. I would take that. Tweak it and was able to create whole
new gangster funk lines. I did a lot of work with the Death Row
camp.”
The work was pretty good too.
Dre’s “The Chronic” spent 8 months
on the Billboard Top 10 album chart. It put the West Coast on the
map and forever changed the sound of Hip Hop ushering in a new style
called Gangster Funk, G-Funk.
Snoop Dogg’s breakout album “Doggie
Style” has been certified 4x Platinum, over 9 million sold
to date. Critics call both albums ground breaking. “The Chronic”
and “Doggie Style” are on Source Magazine’s Essential
Hip Hop Album List as well as Rolling Stones “Most Influential
Albums of the 90's.”
“Dre’s stuff comes straight from Pfunk.
Sometimes he had a definite line. Other times he would come up with
something and I would come up with something...he knew basically
what he wanted. Dre is a genius producer. He don’t play any
instruments but he knows what he wants to hear.. Tupac almost always
had a track ready....but when they came to know me they would let
me create some stuff.”
Looking over the different albums Ricky did with
the Death Row camp, He received writers and/or production credits
on a lot of material. Beside Snoop and Dre some of those albums
were monsters. A couple of the Tupac tracks Ricky co-produced have
been in recent hit movies.
“I made more money with the Hip Hop boys than
I ever made doing R & B or Rock n Roll. I’m talking buying
a house and buying a car money. At one point I was making ten thousand
dollars a week. I’m still getting paid from the stuff I did
with them.”
*****************
Most of the fans think that Ricky is one of the so called “Newbies”
in the Pfunk camp, but like in so many instances, when you do a
little digging, you find that the person’s association with
the Funk has been a long one. Ricky is no exception.
“I was on the road with Undisputed Truth and
met Garry and Boogie in Toronto. Before they were with George. They
were still in United Soul. I was 17, Garry was 18 and Boog was 19.
We locked up then.”
Old School Funkadelic fans are appreciating the
Ricky Rouse addition to the Funk Mob. It has brought a lot of the
Funkadelic classics back into the live show mix; I Got A Thang,
Good Ol Funky Music, I Wanna Know If It’s Good to you Baby.
I Betcha. He plays them note for note and remains incredibly faithful
to the original compositions
“I met Eddie, Tiki, Tawl and Billie up in
United Sound recording studio in Detroit. When I was working with
Bobby Womack or doing some stuff with the Dramatics they would be
cutting in the other room. Then when Garry and Boogie joined the
band, Garry would invite me to sit in.
I probably know the old stuff a little better than
Byrd or Michael cause I was sittin there with Garry and Eddie when
they were doing it. I would be one of the guys hanging out that
they would grab to do something sometimes. Garry and I came up with
the guitar line for Bop Gun. I’d been into Funkadelic since
like 1970 so the stuff from between 70-76 I know very well. I know
where it was comin from.”
This is a particularly dirty version of the Pfunk
guitar army. Dirty in the sense that Mike “Kidd Funkadelic”
Hampton, Garry Shider and Boogie Mosson are all kick ass guitar
players in their own right. Adding Ricky Rouse to the crew is just
a Dirty trick. Most bands would kill for a guitarist who can play
like any one of these guys, Imagine what they would do for four
of them.
Each one brings a distinct and different feeling
to what they are playing. Ricky brings a blues flavor, Michael has
a hard rock edge, while Garry and Boogie each bring their own version
of the Gospel thing to it. You can get lost following one or the
other as they weave their way through a song. RonKat Spearman also
has been a pleasant surprise on guitar. He’s got his own style
and is making it work.
“That’s right, that’s right”
Ricky agreed, “ but I don’t just bring a blues feeling
to it, I bring a rock edge too now... Except its more in the Jimi
Hendrix vein, using feedback and distortion. Kidd Funkadelic brings
that crunchy heavy metal style to it which is a whole ‘nother
thing.”
Ricky popped back onto the Funkadelic radar in 1994
when Pfunk was playing the Hendrix Tribute in Seattle. The big concert
organized by the Hendrix family once they won the rights back to
all of the Jimi Hendrix Catalogue.
From all accounts it went something like this.
Ricky just showed up. Nobody really knew him up
in Seattle. They let him jump on stage for a song. The place went
nuts. He ended up playing almost an hour and half. He was rolling
around on the floor, playing with his teeth, behind the back. He
did it all right in front of Al Hendrix, Jimi’s dad. The crowd
lost it. When he walked off the stage everybody, both player haters
and new fans were asking “Who’s that guitar player?
“Everybody backstage from Detroit played it
off,” Clip told me. “ We played it cool. ‘Oh,
that’s just Ricky Rouse. You don’t know about him? He’s
from Detroit. He’s been doin’ that for years.’
Ricky turned em out. He walked away with the crown that night for
sure.”
“I really clicked with them [P-Funk All-stars]
at the Jimi Hendrix show up in Seattle at the Bumpershoot. I played
with the Funk, Buddy Miles, all of them for about an hour and a
half. It was the greatest gig I ever did. Me and G locked up then.
George had always thought of me as that little kid who could play
guitar. After that he started calling me for sessions and stuff.”
The first time I got turned onto Ricky Rouse was
in 1999. We were in New York City working on tracks that would eventually
end up on How Late. Clip and Garry were in a studio down on 12th
Street working on “The Last Time Zone”. George was uptown
on 48th Street doing over dubs. I walked in one time to drop off
some tapes. George sat me down and played Viagravation for me..
There was a guitar track that was wailing, way back in the mix,
giving it some dimension. Whoever it was, was tearing it up. All
I could tell was that it definitely wasn’t Michael or Byrd.
“Who’s that guitar player? I asked
“That’s Ricky Rouse,” G said with
a smile. “You don’t know anything about that do you?
I didn’t but I got schooled pretty quick.
Clip filled me in on Ricky’s discography, taking care to make
sure I knew that Ricky also was from the center of the musical universe,
Detroit. DJ MajicJuan hooked me up with an instrumental version
of The Chronic. I found a new appreciation for Hip Hop. Later on
that summer Ricky showed up at the House of Blues in LA and jumped
on stage with Pfunk. He was ripping up guitar solo’s playing
behind his back and between his legs. He almost knocked Byrd over
when he started tumbling across the stage. What he was doing was
impressive but more amazing to me was he didn’t miss a note.
Not one.
“George would ask me to come and sit in with
the band. I would only do a few shows here and there because I was
still out on the road with Chaka Kahn. We hooked up more in the
studio, I did a lot of stuff on the How Late album. Then he called
me and asked me to come down to Philly to work on his new solo album.”
Most of the guitar work on the new George Clinton
solo album “The Gangsters of Love” is Ricky Rouse along
with appearances by Carlos Santana, and Garry Shider. When Blackbyrd
McKnight decided to go on hiatus, George once again asked him to
come out on the road.
“George kept telling me he thought I sounded
real good when I sat in at that anniversary show in Berkeley in
2007... I had just left Chaka Kahn after winning a grammy and being
her musical director for eight years. This time when George asked
me to come out with the band, I said yeah...I’ve been in and
around the funk for years, but this is the longest period of time
I’ve spent with the Mob.”
You never know how fans are going to react to a
change in band members. Blackbyrd McKnight had been with Pfunk since
the late 70's. Anyone stepping into that spot had to prove themselves.
The first time I saw this incarnation of the band
I was excited. They were really playing with some fire. Tight as
hell, breaking out seldom heard Funkadelic classics. The vocals
sounded crisp. The band was getting along fine on and off the stage
from everything I could see.
I knew it was going to work when a real friend of
the band, someone who has been around them forever, looked at me
during a show, started shaking his head. “You know Byrd is
my boy, I love ‘em,” he said.”But this new guy...he’s
incredible. What’s his name, Ricky who?
********************
Ricky has been busy during PFunks off days. He did some tracks for
American Idol sensation Fantasia’s next album. Blue Train
a new band he formed with Mothers Finest Bass player Jerry “Wyzard”
Seay has been in the studio recording their debut album. There is
even talk of reforming the Ricky Rouse Club.
“I like to keep busy. I wanna put something
down on Clips’s new stuff he is doing for the 420 Funk Mob...He
played me some of the tracks. I’ve also heard the DRUGS and
Cacophonic stuff. He’s a great producer in his own right.”
Ricky has been on the road and in the studio with
some of the most iconic figures in the music industry for almost
40 years. Everybody from Screamin Jay Hawkins and Solomon Burke
to Bohannon, Stevie Wonder, Toni Braxton, and Dr Dre. I was curious
to find out how P-Funk ranks against some of the other bands he’s
been in.
“Out of all the bands I’ve ever been
in, playing with P-Funk is the most fun I’ve ever had on stage.
For the first time I get to be the BAD ASS guitar player in a band
that actually calls for me to be just that... I would do my freaky
stuff with Chaka but it’s not the same. You know what I mean?
Here it’s different. George lets me play as
loud as I want, as long as I want to. I get to do all my freaky
stuff..I really get to be THAT guitar player. Have that attitude.
George encourages it, that’s what he wants.
It’s a great feeling, standing next to Michael playing.. waiting
until George let’s me go so I can EXPLODE.... For me playing
in Parliament/Funkadelic is like being in the Black Rolling Stones.”
The next PFunk show you’re at and you hear
somebody ask. “Hey who’s that guitar player with the
White Strat? Just turn, flash them your biggest acid grin and tell
‘em, “That’s Ricky Rouse, The best guitar player
you never knew you heard before.”
************************************************
Look for Ricky’s MYFUNK page to go online. You’ll be
able to check out some of his new stuff and find out about all the
old stuff. Become an official member of the Ricky Rouse Club...
Coming soon to MYFUNK
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